Dutch Court Orders Facebook To Ban Celebrity Crypto Scam Ads (techcrunch.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A Dutch court has ruled that Facebook can be required to use filter technologies to identify and preemptively take down fake ads linked to crypto currency scams that carry the image of a media personality, John de Mol, and other well known celebrities. The Dutch celerity filed a lawsuit against Facebook in April over the misappropriation of his and other celebrities' likeness to shill Bitcoin scams via fake ads run on its platform.
In an immediately enforceable preliminary judgement today the court has ordered Facebook to remove all offending ads within five days, and provide data on the accounts running them within a week. Per the judgement, victims of the crypto scams had reported a total of ~$1.8M in damages to the Dutch government at the time of the court summons. It's not yet clear whether the company will appeal but in the wake of the ruling Facebook has said it will bring the scam ads report button to the Dutch market early next month.
In an immediately enforceable preliminary judgement today the court has ordered Facebook to remove all offending ads within five days, and provide data on the accounts running them within a week. Per the judgement, victims of the crypto scams had reported a total of ~$1.8M in damages to the Dutch government at the time of the court summons. It's not yet clear whether the company will appeal but in the wake of the ruling Facebook has said it will bring the scam ads report button to the Dutch market early next month.
very fast dutch guy (Score:2)
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At least it wasn't a Dutch celery.
not just him (Score:2)
In the UK we get these under the brand of Martin Lewis, a famous financial expert for orfinary people. They're obviously scams as he'd never suggest bitcoin get-rich-quick, but many might fall for it because it carries his face.
So, yeah, I'm surprised these haven't been taken down PDQ by Facebook already.. but then I guess they pay well with their scammed proceeds.
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Every time Elon Musk tweets there is an account with his profile picture and Elon Musk as the name hawking Bitcoins. "Get your free bitcoins".
We don't need General Artificial Intelligence to solve this problem.
If (User.Display.Name == Reply.Parent.User.DisplayName && content.contains("Bitcoin")) {DELETE(); BAN();}
They clearly just don't care. I hope courts hit them for millions and millions in penalties until they invest $100 in fixing the problem.
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Facebook use to be considered a safe place online. Compared to going to random websites that would give you millions of popups and spyware. However, if they just become too lazy on who they will and not advertise for. Then too many scams and dangerous ads will be on the platform. Making it less and less safe to use every day.
At some point people will just stop using the site, and Facebook will go out of business with a billi
Say what? (Score:3)
Facebook used to be considered a safe place online.
In what times or on which planet? I remember the gopher days, but I do not remember a time that visiting facebook could ever be considered safe.
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"Compared to going to random websites that would give you millions of popups and spyware."
You may remember the gopher days, but you seem to have a memory lapse of the late 1990's - early 2000's.
During this period we didn't have too many large websites like Facebook. Slashdot use to be a major website during that time. But there were many smaller sites, all trying to make sweet
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So you think they'll just ignore a Netherlands court because it's a small country? OK, then contempt of court is pretty serious and the court *will* get their attention one way or the other,
If you don't know what you're talking about, shut your foodhole.
The verdict maximizes the penalties to 1.1m euro, which is peanuts for FB.
Contempt of court is not applicable here.
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So why would FB listen to them ever? They wont of course This is a tiny dig barking at the universe and expecting a responce.
That tiny dog is part of the EU dog pack. They are fairly vicious canines and can bite quite painfully when in group. One of the advantages of being part of a pack - one UK is about to learn the hard way by deciding to be a lone stray moggie.
I have reported several and FB disagrees (Score:4, Interesting)
I have reported many of them where they pointed to a fake article about a celebrity revealed how to make money fast before they could turn off the camera on a daily show, with images and layout copied from one of the tabloids.
The facebook reviewers either didn't return or returned with "We have looker at the ad and it doesn't violate our guidelines ...".
Every. Single. Time.
To be fair, the fake articles used cloaking so if the "fbcliclid" CGI parameters etc. weren't there they showed something else. But that is pretty simple to check. It could be argued that such gross incompetence/apathy virtually amounts to collusion.
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In the case in TFA, the celebrities themselves are telling FB that they did not sponsor the product in the ad, and their image is being used without permission. No investigation is required (other than validatin
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That requires you/their investigation to prove that the advertised product is a scam
No it doesn't. Facebook is not a free speech platform. They can block adverts for any reason.
All it requires is that they look at it: facebook page "ABC" makes an advert called DEF.COM, but points to GHI.COM that generally talks about hamsters and ferrets, to a page that talks about some celebrity that does something, where the whole page layout is copied from tabloid JKL.COM and all (_all_) links point to makemoneyfast.com.
Anyone with half a brain will deduce that:
- the facebook account was probabl
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I always listen to Dutch celerities (Score:2)
After all, they spel real gud